Online transactions are becoming increasingly common. Naturally, a user must first be online (i.e., have access to the Internet) before he or she can make an online transaction. Accordingly, in a typical residential Internet access scenario, a user employs customer premises equipment (such as a computer equipped with a modem) to log in to a service provider account, whereupon the customer premises equipment is authorized by the service provider to access the Internet. At this point, the user is “online” and is free to use the customer premises equipment in order to browse among the multitude of servers (i.e., merchant websites) from which online transactions can be effected. Typically, the user identifies a particular merchant website, browses the goods or services offered, and identifies those items of interest (e.g., by adding them to an electronic “shopping cart”).
One of the most important yet sensitive aspects of electronic commerce is the “checkout” phase, whereby payment data (e.g., credit card information) needs to be provided to the merchant website in order to purchase the items of interest (namely, those in the electronic shopping cart). Here, many things can go wrong from a security and/or a user experience standpoint. For example, incorrect or fraudulent payment data may be provided via the merchant website, or the user may discover that he or she has insufficient funds or credit to pay for the items of interest. Compounding these difficulties is the sheer amount of time that the user needs to expend attempting to purchase one or more items of interest. Moreover, due to the fear of identity theft, certain users are reluctant to provide merchants with their credit card numbers online under any circumstances.
Against this background, there is a need in the industry for solutions that will enable secure online transactions to take place, in which the user experience related to effecting such transactions is simplified.